


Vanguard Awoken

by JustJasper



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Battle, Elysium, Gen, War Hero (Mass Effect), skyllian blitz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 19:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2593529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustJasper/pseuds/JustJasper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the Skyllian Blitz, Shepard discovers her true biotic potential.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vanguard Awoken

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta-ed.
> 
> Find out more about Andromeda Shepard [on my tumblr](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/tagged/andromeda_shepard).

It was sheer dumb luck that Andromeda was close to the perimeter when the first shots rang out and the alarms sounded throughout the colony. It was a frontal assault, brazen, and from the chatter of communications she quickly realised there was an assault going on in orbit too.

Elysium had always reminded her of a fortress; the colony was surrounded by high walls where security patrolled high about the perimeter defences, and now a hoard of mercenaries and pirates were attempting to break through. Small attack forces all around the wall serves as distractions from the main attack at a weaker area of defences, not a clever play by any means but effective; they could not ignore the smaller attacks and let them breech, which took fire-power away from the main defence.

When she reached the defences there were already casualties. Shepard knew the wounds, a high level of concussive and maiming rounds that caused the most damage possible. She could hear the sound of snipers targeting guards on the tops of the walls, knew that taking out those defences would make the ground assault easier for the attackers.

She watched from behind cover as a salarian soldier was shot in the arm, flung back by the force of the shot and lay sprawled on the ground, dazed and smoking from the blast. She stayed crouched and scuttled over, prepping her omnitool as she went. She pressed her hand into the curve of their sternum to stop them moving, and positioned her tool over the wound on the salarian's arm, coating it in the salve. She wiped away the excess of greenish blood to check the wound was sealed, then tapped their face to get their attention.

“You're patch up, you still with us?” she asked as gunfire sounded beyond.

“Yes, yes, I think,” they said, testing their movement. “I can go on. Thank you.”

Begin a combat medic was no easy feat, as you had to be able to hold your own in a fire fight and administer aid to your unit. Andromeda was good at her job though, very good, and she kept moving, stopping to give aid until she found the area where the main assault was taking place. She had seen one of two others from her unit with the colony defence forces, but she suspected a majority of them were still in the civilian areas that had undoubtedly been locked down.

Things changed an hour into the assault: the ranks of soldiers were beginning to dwindle, and the forces became increasingly non-military civilians who had taken up arms. She called out instructions and barked commands, rallying people into the best defensive positions, even thought she doubted it was not enough to keep the invasion out indefinitely.

“They've got charges on the wall!”

Andromeda looked towards the call in time to watch the explosion that ripped open the wall, sending her and the fighters she was amongst flying. A chunk of something connected hard with the side of her head, the left side of her helmet shattering with a sickening crunch, lighting up sharp pain above her eye and concussive pain over the rest of her skull. The shrill cries of the troops now pouring through the breech was clear in her ears as she tore the broken helmet of her head. She knew it meant she could be taken out with one good headshot, but she didn't plan on being a stationary target. She applied medigel roughly to the area, and and hoped for the best.

They were breeched; Elysium's defences had failed, and they were going to be overrun. They would not not spare civilians, and Shepard knew it. Desperately, half blinded by blood that was pouring over the eyelashes of her left eye, she struck out with a biotic blast, knowing it was only enough to stun someone, knowing it was hopeless against the hoard that was flooding though. But instead of the small surge of a paltry biotic blast, she felt unfamiliar power thrum through her, leaving her hand as an immense wave of force that knocked more than a dozen descending pirates flying, scattering them like skittles.

It was almost _easy_ after that. She suddenly had more power thrumming through her body than she'd ever had before, and she could use it in an unrefined, messy, but brutal way. She tossed pirates around like ragdolls, finishing them with pistol shots when her biotics failed to rip them apart. She threw up quick biotic domes to protect herself as she tended to the wounded she could reach, patching them up with lightning speed and protecting them until they could return to battle or flee. After a few failed attempts she worked out how to form a small warp field, keeping attackers in place so she could parry and dash away, knowing that as immensely good it felt to be unleashed like never before, she was probably burning out her biotic amp at an alarming rate and she wouldn't be able to keep this up for good.

The security protocols hadn't activated and sealed the physical breech with a barrier, the blast must have damaged the systems, and she knew the only hope to keep Elysium was the seal the defences again. She knew, hoped, the other enemy fighters would have abandoned their distracting attacks and made for this battleground.

At some point an asari had joined them and was trying to push troops back through the breech with wave after wave of biotics. Andromeda mimicked her action, her biotics less precise but more volatile. Several soldiers realised what they were attempting and began laying down suppressive fire to aid them.

“We need to seal it!” the asari shouted.

“I can seal it!” another soldier nearby called as she set off a combat drone.

“Go!” Shepard yelled. “You go!” she called to the asari. “I can do this, cover her, get the breech sealed!”

As she took over and sent out another biotic wave, she felt something push back against it, registered the crackle of biotics meeting.

“Take out their biotics!” she called, trying to identify them as she lashed out with a slash of biotic force, knocking three enemy fighters off their feet.

She was hit with a ball of biotic power and heard her shields drop, and with a yell holstered her pistol and used both hands to send a biotic shockwave pounding along the ground through the breech out into the enemy forces, ripping apart two of the closet mercs and sending more flying off in the strange low gravity of biotic residue. Floating about they were easy for the other ground troops to take out.

She didn't know how long it took, but when instead of biotics connecting with flesh they cracked against an orange wall of light, she knew they had done it. Several pirates threw themselves against the barrier, wide eyed and doomed to be obliterated, their attempted charges cut short by the sudden appearance of the defences. For good measure Andromeda tossed a biotic charge high up over the wall to land amongst the mercenaries, a last warning shot before the laser grid in a dome stretching over the colony activated. That must have been activated secondary to sealing the breech, knowing it was pointless if there was a way for troops to get in. Yells of triumph went up around her as an order to scramble the fighters sounded from various omnitools. The enemy was in retreat, but would not get far.

Elysium was saved.

\---

Two days after the fact and the squaddies were already calling it 'The Blitz'. Every time she heard it Shepard felt an echo of the mix of adrenalin and fear that had sustained her through the assault on Elysium, and it was leaving her feeling physically drained. They were set to ship out in the next day or two, after the medal ceremony.

She was being awarded the Star of Terra. It still didn't feel like it was really happening to her; so she wasn't precisely nervous about the upcoming ceremony. She could count on one hand the number of servicepersons who had been awarded the Star of Terra in the last two decades on one hand, and it was hard to conceive that she would be joining those elite ranks.

More pressing on her mind was what had been awoken in her during the assault. She'd shown minimal biotics growing up, barely enough to throw a ball around, and it wasn't as if the streets were a place where she could be trained. Biotics were usually picked up and trained early, given guidance and kept on record. She'd been undocumented until she enlisted, a surprise anomaly that hadn't caused more than passing interest since her abilities were barely combat-efficient. That had been fine; her limited biotics had just been another tool in her arsenal that made her a proficient field medic. Now she didn't know where she stood.

Absently she ran her fingers over the scabs that had formed over the little cuts around the main wound over her eye, familiarising herself with the shape of them; dot, dot, line, little jagged cut. She ghosted her thumb over the butterfly stitches keeping the main wound closed, careful not to open up the persistent cut. Even the stitches hadn't stopped it reopening, the flying debris that had hit her had obviously lacerated her brow pretty deep. There would be a scar for sure, but to walk away from what had happened with only that felt remarkable.

“Lieutenant Shepard.”

She looked up, wondering whether she was about to be reminded to prepare for the medal ceremony, but instead recognised the face of new Captain David Anderson. She'd never met him, but everyone had heard of him and had been passively following his rise through the alliance.

“Captain,” she greeted, standing to salute.

“At ease, Shepard,” he said, coming to sit on the bench beside her. He wasn't in uniform, but in a pair of jeans and leather jacket, and she wondered if he was on shore leave too. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” she lied.

“How's your head? I hear you fried your bio-amp.”

“Yes, sir. The implant stood up, though, so I don't have to have brain surgery again.”

“And you had no idea you were capable of that level of biotics?”

“No,” she said honestly. “I was barely suitable for the L3s when I joined the alliance. I wasn't-” she paused, wondering how to phrase it, “-in the system as a kid, so it never got picked up. So I guess I never developed what I could do.”

“You enlisted in Havana, that where you grew up?”

“Matanzas.”

“They never tested you in school for biotic potential?”

“I dropped out of school when I was eleven,” she shrugged. “I was in state care, it was shit so I ran away.”

“Where to?”

“The streets. Nobody there to train biotics. Mine manifested once I hit puberty, but it just made me even more scared of authority. There was a lot of stigma about biotics, thought I'd get institutionalised.”

“Near enough, I suppose,” he said, which surprised her. She was sure he was going to tell he that she was wrong, that she just hadn't understood and she would have been nurtured as a biotic if she came forward. “With nobody to advocate for you, who knows what might have happened. The Alliance doesn't have a good record with biotics.”

“It doesn't.”

“So,” Anderson said before an awkward silence could fall, “are you nervous about the ceremony? The Star of Terra is an outstanding honour to receive, well deserved.”

“Yeah,” she sounded distractedly. “I mean, it is, I'm not nervous so much as.. well.”

“Well?”

“You know why I was in armour?” Shepard asked, a huff of a laugh shaking her shoulders. “I just came out of the combat arena. I trying to impress an asari I met at the bar. I wasn't a hero because I meant to be, I was just in the right place. The rest of my unit fought, where they could. A lot of them got trapped in the lockdown. I wasn't trying to be a hero, I was just there.”

“That's exactly why you are a hero, Shepard,” Anderson said, a certainty in his voice. “You could have retreated to find your unit, or fallen back, but you didn't. You didn't just fight to protect Elysium, you were a leader. I've seen the reports, spoken to a lot of people. They're not overstating your efforts. You took a very risky strategy of moving to give medical aid while engaging in combat, and you kept going when you'd been injured.”

“Anyone would have.”

“But _anyone_ wasn't there, you were. One very insistent turian told me you held off a batarian warlord while maintaining a biotic field around you both while you tended his lacerated back plates. An asari told me you held the breech on your own to give her and an engineer time to manually deploy the defence fields, drawing their fire and pushing them back. Someone else told me you were no hero, and should be reprimanded, because you wasted time giving aid to a number of vorcha that had been injured trying to flee.”

“I wasn't just going to let them die, just because they're vorcha,” she snapped, but when she looked at him Anderson was smiling kindly.

“You're a hero, Shepard. A good soldier, too; you made Staff Lieutenant in four years without a single inside contact to boot. And, I think, a good person. Have you given any thought to where you're going from here?”

“We're shipping out after the ceremony, there's a colony in the Terminus having trouble with turian pirate raids, and the Hierachy won't offer any protection.”

“Doesn't your new biotic capabilities change things?”

She took a long breath in through her nose, smoothing her hands over her thighs. She'd tried not to think about it too much, but she already knew the answer.

“I guess it does. I always planned to train in medicine, to go to med school.”

“You could still go do that. You could probably do anything you wanted after what you've just done.”

“Yeah,” she smiled, unsure how to take that information. “I think, realistically, I need to train again. I was sloppy out there, my biotics were messy, not controlled. I can do better. I want to do better. I want to know how powerful I am.”

Anderson was still smiling, almost proud, which was strange to her. She had only known him all of five minutes, and he already looked like he cared about her. She had never really had someone who wasn't her peer caring for her; running with a street gang had left them more or less equal, looking out for each other as a family.

“Where would you like to train?” he asked. “You could have your pick of teachers and academies, I can make it happen for you.”

“Why?” she asked. “I don't mean to be rude,” she went on, “but you're not my Captain. Why do you care?”

He didn't look offended by her question, just smiled that same kind smile, something that still looked genuinely caring. “I think you have greatness in you. I think you are exactly what the future of the Alliance needs.”

She was a good marine, she was confident of that, but she'd never considered herself that important in the grand scheme of things. Certainly, nobody had ever talked to her as if she had this much potential. It was strange, and as much as she wanted to she couldn't fully trust the idea.

“Just give it some thought, Shepard,” he said, standing up. “Let me know, either way. You can contact me on the SSV Tokyo.”

“I will, sir.”

She watched him leave, and as she touched the cut above her eye again, she considered it would do no harm to take the opportunity afforded her by her own efforts. Even if there wasn't greatness in her, she had nothing to lose.


End file.
